A Rose By Any Other Name.
by VGChaos
Summary: Trunks' thoughts on Love and what it can do to a person when it is not returned.


Rating: PG

Warnings: shonen ai, angst, Trunks' POV

Disclaimer: I don't own DBZ, roses, or Unrequited Love. I am not making any money out of this fic, and do not intend to.

A Rose By Any Other Name.

Love.

Quite possibly the most awe-inspiring emotion in the world, one that could lead a person to death or euphoria, happiness or tragedy, pleasure…or pain.

Don't get me wrong, Love can be a wonderful thing, I respect Love, but I also hate it. Hate the way it makes me feel, all the time pain and sadness have their harsh metal hooks sunk into my chest. 

A wise man once said,

_'The greatest thing you'll ever learn_

_Is to love and be loved in return_.'

In school we were always told to take note of what wise men said, to respect it and to obey the general idea of it. Well, I guess I must be a slow learner, see I remembered the part about falling in love, but I forgot about being loved in return. That is why I Hate Love, and while I know it is Love that I feel, there may be a slight misunderstanding as to what kind of Love it is and why I Hate Love so much, so let me explain.

There are a few different types of Love in this universe; 

True Love.

Fake Love.

…and Unrequited Love.

The first two are the kindest of the three, since for each of those to exist there must be mutual feeling on each side of a relationship. But for Unrequited Love, there _is_ only one side to the relationship, and that side often experiences a large amount of Pain combined with their Unrequited Love. For what is Unrequited Love but a Love that is not returned or reciprocated, which obviously means that even though you may love that other person with everything that you are, they don't love you. 

And that is the most agonizing notion there ever was and ever will be. 

Another wise man once said,

_'One word frees us_

_Of all the weight and pain in life,_

_That word is Love.'_

What that particular wise man neglected to mention, was that Love can also _bind_ us with all the weight and pain in life. My particular case of Unrequited Love can be considered as one of the more excruciating. The person I'm in Love with is not only another male, but my best friend…

Which means that I get to spend as much time as I want with him, but am never able to tell him how I feel, and it also means that _I'll always be able to see exactly what I can't have_.

And there is no race in any universe that has ever been able to deal with that, Humans and Saiya-jins are no exceptions. When Humans are faced with the very thing they want but can't have, they feel sadness, anger, frustration and any other myriad of unnamable emotions.

But when Saiya-jins are forced into the position of spending so much time with something they can never have, all they feel is anger. An incredibly potent anger which has the power to destroy them, and that anger is usually directed towards themselves and their own mistakes. All throughout history Saiya-jins have usually only ever been beaten in battle because of their own emotions. 

Almost the entire Saiya-jin race was destroyed because they allied themselves with Frieza, who ultimately was their destroyer. My father allowed himself to be beaten numerous times because of his own arrogance, pride, and his fearlessness.

I have allowed myself to be beaten because of one of those traits I inherited from my father. I did not fear falling in Love. And that is quite possibly the worst mistake I will ever make for the rest of my life.

By the time I realized what I had done to myself, it was too late. And I had found something to fear, see I was never afraid of falling in Love…but now I am afraid of him not loving me back. And my fear is justified, because he has never…will never…Love me.

And I can never tell him how I feel either, because then I run the risk of losing my friendship with him. And if I lost that then I would have nothing to hold onto to make living this life worthwhile. 

I'd give in to depression and end up slashing my own wrists, over-dosing on drugs, or some other such thing that would force my traitorous heart to stop beating.

My traitorous heart, that's true, it is a traitor. I was betrayed by the one thing that I should have been able to rely on, and in the end it will destroy me. No matter how hard I try, friendship is not going to be enough to pull me through this torture.

Ever hear the story of the Trojan War? Well, my heart was the Trojan horse, and now the Greeks are destroying me from the inside and I'm powerless to stop them. I know it's strange that someone with Saiya-jin blood could be powerless, and I know my father would be mortified at that bit of weakness, but in truth I'm not powerless…I'm just accepting. 

I've accepted that I Love Goten, and for some odd, masochistic reason…I can't and won't make that Love go away. I've tried, God have I tried, but it never works, and I think I've given up on trying to get rid of it.

And even though I know Goten will never Love me, I still hope, and that hurts almost as much as Love. Despite popular belief, I don't like fighting and I don't like pain. Unrequited Love combined with Hope is enough pain for countless lifetimes, and I just want it to go away.

One day this will end, and if it doesn't, I'll make it end. Because I don't know how much longer I can handle it, my father never covered anything like this in my training, my mom has never discussed anything about loving another boy in any of her 'motherly talks'. 

So all I can do is think about it, what I feel, when I began to feel it, just thinking and thinking…

And sometimes I wonder why, out of all the people in this world, did I have to fall in love with someone who didn't love me back.

VGChaos


End file.
